| War in background of life |
I’ve got back to Jerusalem today. I’m currently writing from the lab, at the Hebrew university. It’s like we’re just keep on with our lives but with still some tension in the air. Well, tension or not, I have not seen a single person today (except some school kids) walking around with the Gas Mask. I’m not carrying it either. Everything in Israel seems quite normal - except the commercial TV channels, which keep boring people to death with endless bla-bla. Seems anybody and his sister are now qualified for showing up on TV and saying what they thinks about that news bit or the other. If we had 1$ for every minute of bullshit news on the TV we’d be out of the economic problem by now.
Still not a word from Salam. I hear that Baghdad got electricity on and off the past days. In addition seems the Iraqi ISP is offline, so I guess no internet connection for anyone in Iraq. Damn. Didn’t think I’d be that worried.
The Iraqi broadcasted pictures of 5 US captives. Yea, big heroes those Iraqis, capturing a lost maintaince unit soldiers. Showing some dead American bodies (which were probably mutilated before filmed). Geez, what would the coalition do now, I guess they’ll have to withdraw. — NOT.
I got really pissed off when hearing the Iraqis are taking civilians - including women and children - and force them to stay at military facilities and army posts as ‘human shields’. They know the Americans will bomb those places and they only want the show dead bodies later, in hope the NARROW-MINDED in the US and Europe will shout laud enough to stop the war. I wish this to be clear - Each and every civilian killed in such manner was killed by the Iraqis! It against all laws, logic and sane human behavior to do that! It’s exactly like giving a child to every soldier to hide behind while he shoot - any returned fire will kill the kid, and if you won’t return fire, you’ll get killed yourself. The big difference - in most cases the coalition forces aren’t even aware of these people so they don’t even know then make a choice.
If it wasn’t for anything else - for this thing alone I would have gone after and kill those shitty Iraqi officials. Saddam and sons should end up DEAD. Not exiled, not jailed - but trialed and executed. (I insist on the trial to let the world know all the horrors he had done, so there won’t be any more ‘beautiful hearts’ out there supporting him).
Update: US troops capture chemical plant.
I’ve tried to see what The Command Post is really worth checking like so many bloggers says, but I was quite disappointed. You still have to weed out links.
Generally speaking, this “TV media coverage” seems to be quite controlled by the Americans, which is a point in their favor. Thy sure seems to know how to hold a psychological war. Journalists were assigned to units - but only to specific ones. I bet the real important forces and the special units have no journalists on them and thus no one can know (relaying only on the media) what they are doing and where. Excellent work. If I may sum up my general impression - there isn’t much news coming on this war. A little bit here, a little bit there, nothing big. In addition, it appears the coalition forces got really really small amount of casualties (which considerate number are own-accidents ones). I’m also quite impressed that the forces are making an effort to keep structures and roads on the way to Baghdad. Long term planning I guess. Something we Israeli’s are known to lake.
I truly hope to be after the war the next weekend. As it seems, the war will be totally over in 2 weeks from now, which is also good for me, since I’m doing a month or reserve duty on the northern border all of April. The last thing I need in Passover is fighting Hezbollah terrorists. As long as they keep quiet there I have no probs with them.
I’ll be off home right now. Got to get over some books for tomorrow’s lectures, got a long night ahead of me. By the way, I’m getting TONS of SMSs the past few days, I’ll update then tomorrow, once I’ll have the time. Keep me posted, people, getting SMSs is really great! 
Promise to self: Not watching News on the telly this evening, except the main edition. 20 minutes TOP!
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"Yea, big heroes those Iraqis, capturing a lost maintaince unit soldiers."
Yes that about sums it up doesn’t it? It did have me worried at first however since my nephew is over there right now as a maitenance crew from Texas. Before they mentioned which division I was freaking out this morning.
I hope this ends soon too. I am worried for the world with the building tensions. And yes, hiding behind civilians is a coward thing to do. But… if any civilians do get killed you know it will be the Americans fault because EVERYTHING is our fault don’t you know?
I think the worlds favorite past time is trashing the Americans. We are damned if we do and we are damned if we do not.
I am not pro war but I am pro troops and I support them. Thank you for your words on your journal. It is nice to see that not everyone hates us.
salam pax is back:
I have internet again will post soon.
but i really have to apologize to the people at [www.industrialdeathrock.com] because the amount of traffic this blog has been getting cause their servers to go down, I am very sorry. I should have been more careful.
looking thri my mail i see that this blog has also been causing blogspot problems. sorry. and Blogger has been generous again with me and allowed this to go and and help. thanks. my mail box is full because of the last two days of internet blackout, going thru them now.
:: salam 3:24 PM [+] ::
The last two days we didn’t have internet access. I thought that was it and started what a friend called a “pblog”, what you will read is what should have been the entries for the 22nd and 23rd.
Blogger and Google have created a mirror to this weblog at [dearraed.blogspot.com] for those of you who have trouble with the underscore in the URL. There are not enough words to thank the people at Blogger for their help and support.
22/3
4:30pm (day3)
half an hour ago the oil filled trenches were put on fire. First watching Al-jazeera they said that these were the places that got hit by bombs from an air raid a few miniutes earlier bit when I went up to the roof to take a look I saw that there were too many of them, we heard only three explosions. I took pictures of the nearest. My cousine came and told me he saw police cars standing by one and setting it on fire. Now you can see the columns of smoke all over the city.
Todat the third in the war, we had quite a number of attacks during daytime. Some without air-raid sirens. They probably just gave up on being able to be on time to sound the sirens. Last night, after waves after waves of attacks, they would sound the all-clear siren only to start another raid siren 30 minutes later.
The images we saw on TV last night (not Iraqi, jazeera-BBC-Arabiya) were terrible. The whole city looked as if it were on fire. The only thing I could think of was “why does this have to happen to Baghdad”. As one of the buildings I really love went up in a huge explosion I was close to tears.
today my father and brother went out to see what happening in the city, they say that it does look that the hits were very precise but when the missiles and bombs explode they wreck havoc in the neighborhood where they fall. Houses near al-salam palace(where the minister Sahaf took journalist) have had all their windows broke, doors blown in and in one case a roof has caved in. I guess that is what is called “collateral damage” and that makes it OK?
We worry about daytime bombing and the next round of attacks tonight with the added extra of the smoke screen in our skies.
23/3
8:30pm (day4)
we start counting the hours from the moment one of the news channels report that the B52s have left their airfield. It takes them around 6 hours to get to Iraq. On the first day of the bombing it worked precisely. Yesterday we were a bit surprised that after 6 hours bombs didn’t start falling. The attacks on Baghdad were much less than two days ago. We found out today in the news that the city of Tikrit got the hell bombed out of it. To day the B52s took off at 3pm, on half an hour we will know whether it is Baghdad tonight or another city. Karbala was also hit last night.
Today’s (and last night’s) shock attacks didn’t come from airplanes but rather from the airwaves. The images Al-jazeera is broadcasting are beyond any description. First was the attack on (Ansar el Islam) camp in the north of Iraq. Then the images of civilian casualties in Basra city. What was most disturbing are the images from the hospitals. They are simply not prepared to deal with these things. People were lying on the floor with bandages and blood all over. If this is what “urban warefare” is going to look like we’re in for disaster. And just now the images of US/UK prisoners and dead, we saw these on Iraqi TV earlier. This war is starting to show its ugly ugly face to the world.
The media wars have also started, Al-jazeera accusing the pentagon of not showing how horrific this war is turning out to be and Rumsfeld saying that it is regrettable that some TV stations have shown the images.
Today before noon I went out with my cousin to take a look at the city. Two things. 1) the attacks are precise. 2) they are attacking targets which are just too close to civilian areas in Baghdad. Looked at the Salam palace and the houses around it. Quite scary near it and you can see widows with broken glass till very far off. At another neighborhood I saw a very unexpected “target” it is an officers’ club of some sorts smack in the middle of [………] district. I guess it was not severely hit because it was still standing but the houses around it, and this is next door and across the street, were damaged. One of them is rubble the rest are clearing away glass and rubble. A garbage car stands near the most damaged houses and help with the cleaning up.
Generally the streets are quite busy. Lots of cars but not many shops open. The market near our house is almost empty now. The shop owner says that all the wholesale markets in Shorjah are closed now but the prices of vegetables and fruits have gone down to normal and are available.
While buying groceries the woman who sells the vegetables was talking to another about the approach of American armies to Najaf city and about what is happening at Um Qasar and Basra. If Um Qasar is so difficult to control what will happen when they get to Baghdad? It will turn uglier and this is very worrying. People (and I bet “allied forces”) were expecting things to be mush easier. There are no waving masses of people welcoming the Americans nor are they surrendering by the thousands. People are oing what all of us are, sitting in their homes hoping that a bomb doesn’t fall on them and keeping their doors shut.
The smoke columns have now encircled Baghdad, well almost. The wids blow generally to the east which leaves the western side of Baghdad clear. But when it comes in the way of the sun it covers it totally, it is a very thick cloud. We are going to have some very dark days, literally.
We still have electricity; some areas in Baghdad don’t after last night’s attack. Running water and phones are working.
Yesterday many leaflets were dropped on Baghdad, while going around in the streets I got lucky, I have two. After being so unkind to the people at [industrialdeathrock.com] I don’t know whether I should post images or not.
And we have had another email attack, this time I was lucky again and have copies of those, the sender is something called [blablabla@hotpop.com]. I have not checked on that yet. Three of them are to army personnel and two to the general public in those they gave us the radio frequencies we are supposed to listen to. They are calling it “information Radio”.
:: salam 4:41 PM [+] ::
…
http://www.clarin.com/diario/hoy/t-534795.htm
http://www.antipasta.org/con/archives/2003_03.html
http://www.michiganreview.com/
WDR
USA Today
Haaretz (hebrew)
I don’t really know who is narrow minded, but you should know by now that there has been more Irakis killed in isolated villages and market places that at military facilities. So much for the human shields.
I don’t know who is coward either, when the greatest military power attacks one of the weakest countries in the world.
I’m glad to see that you still don’t carry your gas mask. You don’t worry too much about Iraq’s WMD and you’re right, there aren’t probably any.
Marie